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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27901963">keeper of kings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape'>batshape</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dagor Bragollach, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nirnaeth Arnoediad, also amras, character death occurs off the page, fingolfin's here but also not really, ghosts (both literal and figurative), or rather the events following such, the god of dreams facilitates some tough family conversations</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:49:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27901963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are running out of kings,” says the spectre of Fingon which kneels across from her. “Turgon is unlikely to take your counsel.”<br/>:<br/>Lalwen in mourning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë &amp; Írimë | Lalwen, Fingon | Findekáno &amp; Írimë | Lalwen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>keeper of kings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>content warning for some mild descriptions of gore</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The moon hangs above them, pale and observant, and Lalwen hisses on the parapet as she pours distilled spirits over her torn palms. Her nephew does not announce his presence, but he comes to stand and watch her and remarks, “You might have done that hours ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen might have. She gestures quietly for Fingon to lean or slump or curl up beside her on the balustrade, and he does none of these things. Her nephew stands, not exceedingly tall but tall enough to cast a long shadow over Lalwen and her bloodied hands, and he watches.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks, perhaps unfairly, that Fingon is waiting for an apology. They have fought a few times already since the breaking of the news the previous day, the most recent row being that in which Lalwen had gripped and broken a glass between the both of her hands, and Fingon had stood and left the hall without offering his assistance in the staunching of the blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen does not think she can offer an apology, nor that she would want to if she could. She is not at fault. She is equally as fragile as her nephew tonight, under the silent moon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead she says, with a blunt forwardness that is mostly her brother’s, and which even makes her flinch: “If you are going to weep, it is best to do so in private this time. Here, if you would like.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingon does not weep. Fingon does not snap either, like Lalwen has done, or like Fingolfin would have. Fingon only says: “Lalwen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen tips her gaze upward to look at him. For a moment there is a taller shadow behind her nephew, gripping his shoulders with terrible gnarled hands, watching her severely. Lalwen looks her elder brother in the face, seeing that the silver fire of his eyes is gone, and blinks to banish the spectre from her field of vision.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could not have stopped him,” she murmurs under the weight of Fingon’s now-singular gaze. “If that is again what you mean to discuss—”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Discuss?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>echoes Fingon disbelievingly. “Like one discusses tariffs?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen searches for a raw edge of her undershirt from which she can fashion a bandage, and finds none. Wordlessly, Fingon offers to her a roll of cloth prepared for such a purpose, and she accepts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would not know,” she says. “I make little habit of discussing tariffs with anyone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lalwen,” Fingon says, and she wraps her left hand with unnecessarily careful study. To avoid the need to reciprocate speech, she takes the edge of the cloth bandage in her teeth and tears it raggedly from the rest of the roll. The edges on both sides fray, marked now with the pink blood in her mouth from the biting of her tongue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Lalwen looks again upward, Fingolfin is there once more, touching the back of one of his flimsy shattered hands to his son’s cheek. Lalwen watches him do so, and then blinks. This time the spectre of her brother lingers when she reopens her eyes, turning his face on his twisted neck to blink back at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could not have stopped him,” Lalwen murmurs softly. She holds Fingolfin’s empty gaze. “I was not his keeper, nor his king.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingon looks at her sharply. His hands seem uncertain now in their devices; he gestures briefly before his own face and then holds them fiercely still at his sides. Lalwen’s brother appears to trace these movements, echoing Fingon’s quiet frustration with her rationality. Lalwen thinks her brother has a bit too much nerve, to plead exasperation with </span>
  <em>
    <span>her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen does not say this. Lalwen shakes her head, and the vision of Fingolfin’s ghost dispels.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was both mine,” Fingon says measuredly at last, with the hitch of both checked anger and grief beneath the confession. They have exchanged such words before. Lalwen, despite her best efforts, has not yet learned to involuntarily stifle her flinch. “He was both my keeper and my king, Lalwen. You might have tried to stop him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen does not sigh. Lalwen only looks quietly aside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For whose benefit?” she asks, knowing even as she does that it is cruel. She hears the sharp breath, the hiss of air between tightened teeth, as her nephew also arrives at this conclusion. “For his? For mine? For yours? I should have stopped him, for the comfort of you having a </span>
  <em>
    <span>keeper</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Findekáno?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lalwen,” her nephew says again, lowly. He, too, looks aside. “That is not fair.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen remembers begrudgingly, in the midst of her selfishness, that she is not singular nor unique in her loss of siblings. Fingon, perhaps, might have considered himself a keeper of his dead kin once. Fingon might share with her now the bitterness of one’s failure to protect those around him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is not fair,” Lalwen agrees softly. “I am sorry.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There, at least, is an apology. She levels her gaze with the ghost of her elder brother, who is wandering contemplatively along the length of the parapet, his broken sword dangling from his equally broken wrist. Fingolfin tilts his head, and it lolls on his crushed neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Meanwhile Fingon has continued to speak, and a brittle edge is ossifying in his voice. “You might not have kept me from him, at the least,” he says levelly, and Lalwen drags her eyes from her brother’s ghost to her nephew’s grim judgement. “With dissembly, distraction, feigned concern for battle wounds which had already been tended, edicts that could have waited, all for the purpose of letting him leave, when I could have stopped him—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could not have,” Lalwen interrupts sharply. “You did not see him—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Indeed, I did not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Finno.” Childhood sentiment, an endearing name, which makes him soften. Lalwen can see that her nephew </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>begun to weep now, silently, even as her own vision watercolors at the edges. “You could not have stopped him. The fire of him was too bright. Whether he had succeeded in drawing Morgoth himself out or not, he had no intention to survive the venture. You would not have saved him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingon stares at her, a fraction unkindly. Lalwen cannot blame him for it. The truth sounds callous to her too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But also,” she continues very quietly, and very carefully, “he asked me not to let you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingon tightens his fists at his sides. Quietly, quietly, he whispers again, “That is not fair.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.” Lalwen looks to her own hands. She is the last of her siblings on the continent, the last to survive Beleriand. She knows that this is not fair. “I know that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ghost of Fingolfin steps beside her at the balustrade, and turns his head to her. Something drips dark from his lips, even as he looks at Lalwen with a vacant imitation of the stern affection that he had always turned unto his little sister. He is not real, Lalwen knows. Were he real, he would speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Now, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he would say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>at the least you could try to think rationally.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And Lalwen would scoff, had she the bravery.</span>
  <em>
    <span> Rationally? </span>
  </em>
  <span>she might have replied. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Rational like you? Rational like him?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Deaths in fire, deaths beneath a crushing heel, do not strike Lalwen as the fates of the exceedingly rational-minded. (She imagines, faithfully to his memory or not, that this particular argument would make her brother smile.)</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You are wallowing, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Fingolfin might chide.</span>
  <em>
    <span> It accomplishes nothing, and besides that, your nose has begun to run.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You are an ass. </span>
  </em>
  <span>But Lalwen swipes at her nose with her sleeve. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You cannot lecture me on rationality, nor on wallowing, dead brother of mine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But this vision of Fingolfin does not smile. He only tilts his head—perhaps it is not a conscious movement, and only a condition endemic of his very broken neck—and Lalwen presses tight her mouth, as she begins to cry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quietly, Fingon takes the cloth roll from her, and begins to bandage her right hand. He does not acknowledge Lalwen’s tears until she entreats him to, pressing her face heavily to his shoulder, and then he only says, “You should lead us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Miserably, Lalwen laughs. “You are only saying that,” she sniffs, pulling away both her head and her half-bandaged right hand, “because you do not want to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” says Fingon, and he fixes her with a severe, achingly familiar expression. “You are his sister, are you not? And you let him die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Frigid silence falls between them. Lalwen’s nephew makes no move to apologize for the accusation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen closes her eyes. “Findekáno,” she murmurs. “That is cruel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe.” Still, Fingon does not apologize. “Do you think it is true?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Lalwen bites back, and Fingon casts his gaze aside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do not know,” he says at last. “I am angry. I cannot think of what may or may not be true.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bandage, half tied to her right palm, flutters loose in a hitch of wind as Lalwen lifts her hands. She takes her nephew’s face between her fingers, and she looks at him very softly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You would make a good king,” she says with all the quiet authority she can muster. “And I am not opposed to being a keeper.” She smiles. Fingon does not; he cries silently, held very still by Lalwen’s hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Broken brown fingers curl again on Fingon’s shoulders, and Lalwen nods shortly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But of course, only if you would like,” she amends, and moves to release his face. Quickly Fingon places the palms of his hands over the backs of hers, pressing the whole of Lalwen’s bloodied palms and aching fingers against his jaw and his tearstained cheeks. Fingon closes his eyes, and therefore does not see the flicker of brief surprise in Lalwen’s face. Nor the flash of relief that loosens the set of her mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment she holds her nephew—or her nephew holds her—and there is silence. Then Lalwen speaks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He loved you very much,” she whispers hoarsely. Fingon does not open his eyes. “He loved you so very much, Finno, and he could not risk that you might follow him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was foolish of him,” Fingon condemns. He is still weeping; his face is very warm in the cold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was,” Lalwen agrees. “And it is right, to be angry. I do not think he expected anything less.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She traces her thumb over a quite faded scar on her nephew’s face; sometimes, the deeper wounds did not heal completely in Beleriand. Fingon had had his cheek slashed open down to the flesh inside his mouth, breaking two of his molars besides, when they had come down on Morgoth’s forces from the Helcaraxë. The mark has never quite disappeared. It pulls slightly when he is aggrieved, and makes him look somewhat weary, like Men when they grow older and their faces begin to line.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am sorry,” Lalwen says at last. “I am sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is not your fault,” Fingon whispers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I am angry. I cannot think of what may or may not be true.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen is not sure that the fault is not hers, in truth. Despite her claims to the contrary, she did often think of herself as something like her brother’s keeper. For so many years she had been the vestige of Indis’s sense and counsel came to Beleriand, the bit of Finwë who could laugh in the face of seriousness and make another laugh at it too (even if it was only indulgently). Perhaps, Lalwen could have kept her despairing, burning, enraged brother alive, if only she had been a better keeper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or perhaps not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Regardless, when Fingon lifts his hands from Lalwen’s so that he can pull her close into an embrace, weeping still, Lalwen looks out over her nephew’s shoulder, and sees nothing of Fingolfin’s ghost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Lalwen is a poor keeper of kings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks this quietly, for she worries that if she thinks it loudly, she will become self-pitying, and Fingon does not deserve that. She picks her way through the battlefield, and searches for blue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is plenty of blue trod into the ground; Lalwen herself wears blue, though hers is pale like the sky on a clear noon, and clasped at her throat with gold. Her nephew had worn a rich, bright sort of blue, stitched with silver, and even for this he had worn the gold in his hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Lalwen finds him, it is not a conscious decision to sink to her knees. It is only something which happens, quite suddenly and silently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is dark now, and shifting things move in the night the likes of which Lalwen does not wish to meet. There is no silence on the plain; the wind howls, and there is much gasping and moaning from dying wolves and orcs, wailing from warriors of the hosts of Huor and of Fingon who do as Lalwen does and search for dead, albeit much less quietly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen places a hand on the dusty, purpling blue of her nephew’s banner. Then she locates silver, identifying what had been a helm before it had been broken, and removes it from his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once she does, she wishes that she had not. There is little left of Fingon’s face, truly—enough to see that he had been beautiful, perhaps, but not enough to see that it had been in the manner of Anairë more than Fingolfin—and the sight makes a sob rise, and then catch, in Lalwen’s throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen has been a poor keeper of kings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is shifting before her, and she looks up desperately, expecting before wolves or orcs or balrogs the imagined shade of her elder brother Fingolfin, or the fresher spirit of Fingon the Valiant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the shade is a different nephew, and he is alive. Behind Maedhros lingers Amras, firm but uneven, as if he would be standing at attention were his left shoulder not pushed haphazardly in its socket and half of his left ear not torn away, his cheek smeared with red. He looks at Lalwen, and then he takes a fraction of a step back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will keep lookout,” he murmurs to his brother, and nods somewhat awkwardly to her before he withdraws. “My lady.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen also nods, though her nephew has never called her </span>
  <em>
    <span>lady </span>
  </em>
  <span>in his lifetime. Quietly, she asks, “Just the two of you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are making for the eastern mountains,” Maedhros says, clipped, of the rest of his host, and then his gaze tips upward past Lalwen and he blinks. “We fell behind for the initial purpose of collecting injured stragglers. We...we have two horses, to meet them there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen does not look behind her. Fëanor’s eldest son looks as if his mouth has gone suddenly dry, and he appears as if he might speak again of something terrible. (Not to Lalwen, she knows, and so she makes no mention of it.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows what Maedhros sees. Perhaps Lalwen does not look behind her for fear of seeing it herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But still, she does not speak on it. Instead she places a finely trembling hand on Fingon’s broken shoulder. Lalwen looks up to Maedhros, and watches as he folds to his knees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With her free hand, she uncorks her waterskin with her teeth and holds it out to him. It is a kindness, perhaps, but more so that Lalwen can judge the trembling of Maedhros’ fingers, and decide if it is genuine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He accepts. Then his grip falters, and he drops the opened skin, spilling the last of Lalwen’s water into the parched dust. She closes her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am sorry,” whispers her eldest brother’s eldest son. “I am sorry.” If the first is an apology intended for her, the second is not. She nods anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I should have been in his guard,” she says. “He would not let me, when I asked. But I should have been.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But then,” says Maedhros, casting his gaze anywhere but the corpse between them, “you would only have died with the rest of them, Lalwen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe.” Quietly, Lalwen touches her dead nephew on his bloodied cheek. “Maybe not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had fought with Fingon about it, first somewhat in jest and then in frustration, when he had only looked at her simply and unreadably. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I do not know how you expect me to be a king’s keeper directing my own company—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Your leadership is needed elsewhere. You would be wasted on a king’s guard, Lalwen—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Wasted, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she had scoffed. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Now you sound like your father—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Írimë, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Fingon had said sharply, and she had bowed her head.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am sorry.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You are not.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Lalwen had agreed, lifting her gaze and baring her teeth. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I am not. Let me guard you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It had not been a private argument. On the eve of battle, obscured from vision but not from eavesdropping in the shade of a large tent, Lalwen had known of those shifting silhouettes outside which listened to her fight with her king. She had lifted her chin, and said regardless, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Findekáno. Let me ride in before you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Fingon had said, in a voice which made clear that the verdict was final, and Lalwen had bowed her head. Kept her mouth shut, and heeded the order.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks now, that it is likely that she would have died in her nephew’s guard. She does not think any impossible prophetic knowledge of such a fate would have changed her mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Lalwen is a poor keeper of kings. Indeed, two of them have died now on her watch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maedhros curses, very quietly. Without looking upward, Lalwen says, “It is not him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am sorry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sets about removing Fingon’s armor, cutting loose his crushed breastplate first. It is to make the corpse lighter, to be carried from the field before daybreak, but also Lalwen wishes to see her nephew one last time not dressed for war.  In armor, he looks most like Fingolfin, and that wound, too, is still tender.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is not really him that you see. You are only guilty, and mourning besides.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Angrily: “Lalwen—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did I condemn you for it?” Sharply, Lalwen meets his gaze. There is a deep ragged cut through his brow, over his eye, which has clearly bled in the shockingly abundant way that head wounds do. Maedhros face is soaked in red, but even bloodstained and terrible he does not look very much like Fëanor. Lalwen finds relief in this. “Or did I pass any judgement which is untrue?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lalwen,” he says again, quietly. Near pleading. “It was not treachery of our own.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If I thought it was,” replies Lalwen measuredly, “I would have killed you here, Russandol, not invited you to a civil conversation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her nephew looks pained as the name. Lalwen does not care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You, then, are guilty too.” There is no accusation in the words, making it rather unlike the way that Lalwen speaks to herself. She nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I should have been in his guard,” she says quietly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only to die with him.” Something in Maedhros’ voice has changed. He does not sound like Maedhros, grim and brittle-voiced as her eldest nephew is, any longer. “That does not strike me as particularly reasonable a wish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Lalwen sits back on her heels and tilts up her face, she is expecting Fingon’s gaze. His voice is kinder, is softer, though there is a ragged wheeze to the ends of phrases which reminds Lalwen simultaneously of both a death rattle and of collapsing lungs. It is Fingon’s voice, modified by death, which speaks to her now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen sighs. Lalwen smiles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen, at last, begins to cry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have been a poor keeper of kings,” she confesses to her dead nephew, who is only as real and present as the living nephew whose place he has taken. “I know you cannot forgive me that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingon does not agree, but he does not argue either. Fingon’s face is bloodstained in nearly the same manner which the vision of Maedhros had been. Deep, cauterized lines stripe his throat, where fire has burned away flesh and revealed in some places cooked sinew and in others, charred bone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are running out of kings,” says the spectre of Fingon which kneels across from her. “Turgon is unlikely to take your counsel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perhaps that is for the best,” Lalwen says with a shrug, and swipes at her eyes. “He would be unwise to do so, with my record.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would not have taken you in my guard,” says Fingon softly. “Even had I known.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen looks downward. She cradles with her left hand the least broken piece of Fingon’s jaw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That does not matter to me,” Lalwen murmurs. “As a figment of my grief, you cannot tell me anything but that which I already want to be told.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you think that is true?” asks Fingon, and Lalwen looks to the ghost of him irritably.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The cheek is not appreciated,” she replies, and her dead nephew tilts his head. Smiles. “Too much of it, and I will begin to think you are real.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It would be strange,” says Fingon, propping his hands against his own spectral and shattered jaw, “to be visited by a living ghost, and then a dead one, and for only one of them to be a real conversation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop that,” says Lalwen, but the edges of her mouth turn briefly upward. “You are trying to drive me mad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Irmo has done stranger things before, I suppose,” muses her dead nephew. “Though I think it would be more likely that we are both real, in this case.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Most likely, that you are both not,” retorts Lalwen, and swipes again at her eyes. Silence drops between them. The ghost of Fingon appears again to be musing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where will you go?” he asks. “Even though I am not merely a figment of your grief, I know little more in death than I did in life about the location of Gondolin. I cannot direct you there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not Gondolin,” says Lalwen with a shake of her head. “Beyond that, I do not know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her nephew’s ghost says nothing. Softly, he reaches out and touches the blood which has gathered thickly in the crushed hollow of the corpse’s throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Similar enough, I suppose,” he murmurs, and Lalwen too thinks of the silent ghost of her brother Fingolfin. She tilts her head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you see him?” she whispers, seeking fruitlessly Fingon’s dark eyes in the shadow of his face. “Ñolo?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her nephew sighs. “In death, not yet.” An approximation of a shrug. “In life, yes. But only once did I see a form that I could believe was really him. He spoke then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Waking?” asks Lalwen. “Sleeping?” Her nephew shrugs again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do not know.” He lifts his broken hand, and touches his own throat in the same manner that he had touched the corpse. “It blends together often, when I think of it. I was grieving, and—you know—very busy with the planning of a doomed march against Morgoth.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen nods. Quietly, she says, “I am sorry.” Fingon smiles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that,” he murmurs. “It is not fair.” Silence stretches again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you mind if I leave your armor?” Lalwen gestures at the breastplate, removed, and the helm, cloven. “Or do you wish to be buried in it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Buried?” Fingon tips his head. “It is an honor, but not one about which I feel strongly. Whatever is easiest for you.” Intangible as he is, his hair does not move in the whipping wind. Still, some of it clings, coiled and sticky with blood, to his face, and Lalwen is seized by the foolish desire to fix it for him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lalwen reaches for her nephew gently, and her fingers pass through his cheek. Fingon looks at her with fathomless eyes and sits back on his heels. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were not as poor a keeper as you believe,” he murmurs tenderly, and in the space of a tearful blink, Lalwen is alone again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wind still whips, picking up strength now, but somehow while she kneels beside the body of Fingon the Valiant, Lalwen is not cold.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i have a vague idea of how i imagine Irmo might help facilitate mourning and coming to terms with death for the elves (even the exiles) who die in Beleriand. it's kind of a plot mechanism here, i guess, but i haven't fleshed out any ideas about it besides the general concept of the newly dead being offered a visit, if they chose, to alert a loved one of their arrival to the halls. this is due in part, i guess, to my indulgent desire to give Fingon some opportunity to reconcile with Fingolfin after he challenges Morgoth, since i don't imagine he was given a chance to oppose his decision before it happened. so, Fingon might not have gotten Fingolfin's corpse, but i like to think he got a visit.</p><p>i imagine Fingon wheedles two such posthumous visits out of the Feanturi, due to his spectacular charm especially in situations concerning Maedhros. Namo might not be as sympathetic as Manwe to Fingon-related misfortunes, but i like to think his brother could be.</p><p>anyway! you can find me at my tolkien sideblog, batshape.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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